Over the past month (it’s hard to believe I’ve been here that long – it sure doesn’t feel like it), I’ve come to really appreciate the English language. I live with three guys from the Netherlands, and one from Rwanda. One of the guys upstairs comes from the US, one from Germany, two from the Netherlands, and one from France. Then there are the girls, who come from the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, China, Austria, and the Czech Republic. We all speak English, though in slightly varying forms. The Dutch students are all American-influenced English speakers because of Holland’s American cultural influence via music and film. The Mexicans and the girl from Singapore are also more American-English sounding simply based on listening to them. The rest are all hybrids of their respective home languages and English. The South Africans here, however, are all British-English speakers. South Africa was at one point colonized by England, and as a result, language is one influence of that.
Examples of British-English are the obvious ones: French fries are chips, potato chips are crisps, the bathroom is the toilet, etc. Then there are the ones I wasn’t expecting: a traffic light is a robot, a syllabus is a study guide, “Pleasure” instead of “You’re welcome” or “No problem”, and people drive and walk on the left side of the street/sidewalk (not language but still derived from British influence). I know there are more good examples, I just can’t think of any right now. But now I can talk about the accents: the main source of struggle for me.
I knew Afrikaner (Afrikaans speaking South Africans with heritage dating back to the 17th Century) English speakers had really thick accents, but had heard some in person before and could understand them. Since here, I’ve met a few as well and they’re intelligible for the most part. There are also the folks who grew up speaking English who are mostly understandable. Then there are people who speak their native languages growing up and learn English in school. These are the one’s I’ve had the most trouble with. Checkout at the grocery store, ordering at a restaurant and asking for directions can be difficult. And I don’t believe this is any problem with learning English later in life (if elementary school is considered late) – it’s simply an accent difficulty. I’m all for keeping heritage and languages alive. It’s part of what makes our world great. Want to speak Spanish or some other language in the US? Please, do. You have that freedom. I would love to be fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, and possibly Hindi and Swahili. Maybe in time. Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that language is a very fluid thing. Accents at home include Southern, Northern, Bostonian, Chicagoan, Valley Girl, New Yorker… you get the idea. We’re all speaking the same language, just with different twangs and unique characteristics. The same is true in South Africa.
Real-life example:
This past weekend a few of my friends and I went to the port city of Durban on the eastern coast. On the way back from dinner on the beach on Sunday night, we got a minibus (taxi) to the Workshop, an area of Durban where most minibuses stop to make exchanges of passengers to other busses. We got off our beach shuttle and started looking for a minibus that was going to Ridge Road, a main artery where our hostel was located. Finally we found a driver who said, yes (after we asked several times to make sure), he was going to Ridge Road. We hopped in with a few locals and were on our way. Jamie and I took note at one point that we were getting on the highway but thought nothing of it, as the driver was local and knew what he was doing. I wasn’t paying attention at the time but eventually we found out that we were not in fact going to Ridge Road, but rather Ridgeway, a suburb of Durban. After some intense and stressful arguing between a couple of the guys in our group with the driver, we were turned around heading in the right direction (the girls and I sat calm and entertained, believing hostility usually gets you nowhere faster than patience and a smile does). Eventually we made it around Ridge Road and were let off near an Italian restaurant and pub we had eaten at earlier in the week. Which was nice, because we all needed a drink after the ordeal. Believe me when I say it was a lot more frustrating and stressful at the time than it sounds en blog.
Back to language: because of our American accents (yes, Americans have accents to the rest of the world), our driver mistook “Ridge Road” for “Ridgeway”. Language is a funny thing: it can unite people to do great things like organizing for a cause or spreading worthy ideas (see Invisible Children), or it can divide and even cause death (see war). And, sometimes, it can get a bunch of foreigners lost in the South African port city of Durban.
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